Dorothy Smith was born in England in 1926. Starting out in the career world in her early 20’s, her goal was to work in the book publishing industry. However, she was unable to be successful in that industry without a degree. So, the path toward a degree led her to the London School of Economics, sociology intrigued her and she earned a degree in it. During her time at the London School of Economics she met Bill Smith, whom she married. As a married couple, Dorothy and Bill opted to move to the United States to both earn graduate degrees in 1955.
Their school of choice was the University of California at Berkeley. Dorothy Smith dealt with the responsibilities of children throughout her graduate work. In her first year at Berkeley she suffered through a miscarriage. Eventually she had two children, both boys; the second was born 9 months before she finished her doctorate. Around a third of the way through her graduate work, Dorothy and Bill both took their comprehensive exams. Interestingly enough, Dorothy passed hers and Bill failed his. At this time Bill Smith dropped out of graduate school, and three weeks before Dorothy finished her thesis her husband left her.
For the next few years after obtaining her doctorate (1964-1966), as a single mother, Dorothy Smith worked as a lecturer in the sociology department at the University of California Berkeley. At this point in her life Dr. Smith was having difficulty caring for her children because widespread daycare was not something offered then as it is now. This difficulty led her to move back to England and she was there for a couple of years. Unfortunately, she and her sons did not like England and Dr. Smith was feeling overworked. So, she chose to move yet again, but this time to Canada.
Dr. Smith taught at the University of British Columbia, where she taught one of the first Women’s Studies classes. While at the University of British Columbia she formed a women’s action group and was very involved in women’s research. In 1977 she decided to teach in the sociology department at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Here she was able to form her own sociology; a sociology for women. Throughout the 1970’s Dorothy Smith devoted her time to written this sociology. She notes in her own autobiography that in 1987 she discovered that she could publish on her own and began publishing an increasingly number of papers and books. Another academic of interest of hers has been institutional ethnography, which works on the objectives of a sociology for people.
Dr. Dorothy Smith describes her current status in life as: “Too much.” She responds to requests to speak and is in the process of writing a book. She does child sitting for her seven year-old granddaughter. She wants to get a puppy this summer. Additionally she does mostly unpaid work with students. Dr. Smith spends a lot of time reading stuff that is related to her research, and she enjoys mysteries and poetry. She goes to the gym almost every day. A hobby of hers is gardening. Additionally, she ponders the impact of climate change on our environment and is disheartened about that.
References
Smith, Dorothy. “A Berkeley Education.” In Gender and the Academic Experience, edited by Kathryn P. Meadow Orlans and Ruth A. Wallace, 45-56. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Smith, Dorothy. “Email Interview by Sierra Powell,” April 2007.
Smith, Dorothy. “Dorothy Smith.” http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/mdevault/dorothy_smith.htm
Friday, April 20, 2007
How She Became an Academic
Dorothy Smith received her B.Sc(Soc) in 1955 from the University of London, UK, London School of Economics. She received her Ph D in 1963 from the University of California at Berkeley, Department of Sociology.
Throughout her academic career Dr. Smith felt the blunt of sexual discrimination, as it wasn’t until after her graduate degree was complete that she was able to get a job. She was told that women’s place was to be in the home, yet she fought these social norms and persisted to get her degree and was successful. In her first position as a lecturer at the University of Berkeley she realized how few women were pursuing what she was. She describes the sociology department as a caste system. In this caste system there were 44 men and 2 maybe 3 women, and all the secretaries at the time were women.
While she was teaching at Berkeley Dr. Smith attended a conference in San Francisco focusing on the potential of women. Here she recognized that there were other women experiences the same things she was. Also around this time she was inspired by one of her first influences in women’s sociology; Jessie Bernard. Dorothy Smith was so inspired at this time that she decided to inform graduate students at Berkeley of the reality of the women’s situation. She posted a list of all the departments and the numbers of both males and females. Smith had noticed that the numbers mentioned above describing the sociology department weren’t unique to that department. Smith took this opportunity to expose these numbers as an act of defiance. The reason this act of Smith’s is viewed as an act in the underground women’s movement, as she calls it, is that it was very rare during this time period (mid to late 1960’s) that facts like that were exposed and nevertheless discussed. Smith describes her experience in the department of Sociology quite accurately: “I was a woman trying to pee in a men’s john. And having got my pants down, I was going to go ahead and pee anyway.”
During all of these experiences in the Sociology department, she was having troubles with her marriage. Dr. Smith explains that her relationship was trapped in a mode of constantly trying to a achieve perfection in the home, with their marriage, and with their children. These experiences led her to commit to her battle against the “institutional imaginary” and study institutional order because she felt unwillingly bound to the social norms of her time.
At this time she explored John Clausen and R. D. Laing’s writings on mental illness, and applied her own experiences to them. Further delving into the term symptomatology which involves having symptoms, but not acting nor refusing to act to change. Dorothy Smith describes other influences in her work at this time as a class on George Herbert Mead and being taught mathematical sociology. A supporter of Dorothy Smith throughout her path in graduate school was John Clausen in the Sociology department at Berkeley. She wrote about the institutional imaginary and was further influenced by Noam Chompsky and his desire for intellectuals to tell the truth about the way things are. Furthermore, her writing was also influenced by feminist poetry that showed her women’s experiences. Her goal in her sociology career became to tell the truth about women using their experiences. Dr. Smith saw a gap between what sociologists said about society and what was going on in the lives of women, and has worked to develop sociology for women.
Dr. Smith was effective in filling the gap of women’s experiences in sociology. She also was an especially important influence on sociology through her recognition of the complex relationship between gender and political structures. A summary of her major works as well as various critiques of it can be found in the Research section.
References
Smith, Dorothy. “A Berkeley Education.” In Gender and the Academic Experience, edited by Kathryn P. Meadow Orlans and Ruth A. Wallace, 45-56. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Smith, Dorothy. “Dorothy Smith.” http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/mdevault/dorothy_smith.htm
Smith, Dorothy. “Sociology from Women’s Experience: A Reaffirmation,” Sociology Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1992): 88-98.
Smith, Dorothy. “Curriculum Vitae.”
Throughout her academic career Dr. Smith felt the blunt of sexual discrimination, as it wasn’t until after her graduate degree was complete that she was able to get a job. She was told that women’s place was to be in the home, yet she fought these social norms and persisted to get her degree and was successful. In her first position as a lecturer at the University of Berkeley she realized how few women were pursuing what she was. She describes the sociology department as a caste system. In this caste system there were 44 men and 2 maybe 3 women, and all the secretaries at the time were women.
While she was teaching at Berkeley Dr. Smith attended a conference in San Francisco focusing on the potential of women. Here she recognized that there were other women experiences the same things she was. Also around this time she was inspired by one of her first influences in women’s sociology; Jessie Bernard. Dorothy Smith was so inspired at this time that she decided to inform graduate students at Berkeley of the reality of the women’s situation. She posted a list of all the departments and the numbers of both males and females. Smith had noticed that the numbers mentioned above describing the sociology department weren’t unique to that department. Smith took this opportunity to expose these numbers as an act of defiance. The reason this act of Smith’s is viewed as an act in the underground women’s movement, as she calls it, is that it was very rare during this time period (mid to late 1960’s) that facts like that were exposed and nevertheless discussed. Smith describes her experience in the department of Sociology quite accurately: “I was a woman trying to pee in a men’s john. And having got my pants down, I was going to go ahead and pee anyway.”
During all of these experiences in the Sociology department, she was having troubles with her marriage. Dr. Smith explains that her relationship was trapped in a mode of constantly trying to a achieve perfection in the home, with their marriage, and with their children. These experiences led her to commit to her battle against the “institutional imaginary” and study institutional order because she felt unwillingly bound to the social norms of her time.
At this time she explored John Clausen and R. D. Laing’s writings on mental illness, and applied her own experiences to them. Further delving into the term symptomatology which involves having symptoms, but not acting nor refusing to act to change. Dorothy Smith describes other influences in her work at this time as a class on George Herbert Mead and being taught mathematical sociology. A supporter of Dorothy Smith throughout her path in graduate school was John Clausen in the Sociology department at Berkeley. She wrote about the institutional imaginary and was further influenced by Noam Chompsky and his desire for intellectuals to tell the truth about the way things are. Furthermore, her writing was also influenced by feminist poetry that showed her women’s experiences. Her goal in her sociology career became to tell the truth about women using their experiences. Dr. Smith saw a gap between what sociologists said about society and what was going on in the lives of women, and has worked to develop sociology for women.
Dr. Smith was effective in filling the gap of women’s experiences in sociology. She also was an especially important influence on sociology through her recognition of the complex relationship between gender and political structures. A summary of her major works as well as various critiques of it can be found in the Research section.
References
Smith, Dorothy. “A Berkeley Education.” In Gender and the Academic Experience, edited by Kathryn P. Meadow Orlans and Ruth A. Wallace, 45-56. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Smith, Dorothy. “Dorothy Smith.” http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/mdevault/dorothy_smith.htm
Smith, Dorothy. “Sociology from Women’s Experience: A Reaffirmation,” Sociology Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1992): 88-98.
Smith, Dorothy. “Curriculum Vitae.”
Teaching
Smith began her career as an academic with a position as a Research Sociologist in the Institute of Human Development in the University of California at Berkeley. She worked there from 1962-1964. Next, Smith worked as a lecturer for graduate students in the Department of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley from 1964-1966. She spent two years in the U.K. working as a lecturer (senior lecturer in 1968) in the Department of Sociology, University of Essex from 1966-1968. She moved to British Columbia in 1968 to work as an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Columbia. She was there from 1968-1976. Here she taught one of the very first Women’s Studies courses. At the same school, she worked as a Professor from 1976-1977. Dr. Smith then chose to work at the Ontario Institute for Studies in education. She taught there from 1977-2001. She was a professor in the Department of Sociology from 1977-2000 and worked as the Head of the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education from 1992-2001. Also, in 1995 she was an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria. Dorothy Smith remains a Professor emerita of the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and of the University of Toronto.
Her outlook on teaching and the power it holds can be summed in this paragraph that she writes: “Universities and colleges already are political; teaching in the social sciences and the humanities is a practical politics. Teaching the canon is patriarchal activism. I take this fact seriously. Of course I want a sociology for women to provide useful research services to organizations working for women’s issues, but I want more as well.” Furthermore, Dr. Smith believes that sociological research should be done using micro analysis using the method of inquiry from the standpoint of women.
When asked if she had any favorite classes to teach and why her response was as follows:
“I liked to teach classes that gave me an opportunity to learn. I’ve beendeveloping an alternative sociology based on principles from the women’smovement practices of ‘consciousness raising’ and it has been importantfor me to discover with students what works and what doesn’t. In havingto teach, you also have to learn how to think about something or throughsomething to clarify it to the point where you can actually speak it. Ilearned a great deal and always enjoyed teaching /the SocialOrganization of Knowledge / to graduate students in sociology at theOntario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). That was a course Iinvented; it has nothing to do with the sociology of knowledge astraditionally taught, but was developed out of early work I’d done on‘documentary reality.’ I’ve invented a couple of courses that I foundvery interesting to teach: one was an undergraduate course at theUniversity of Victoria – I’d misunderstood what I was supposed to teachand set it up as a course on /Research and Social Justice/ in which Itold students about, and invited in visitors with relevant experience totalk about, the relevance of different kinds of sociological researchmethods/approaches to different settings of social justice activism. Mysecond invention was an introductory graduate theory course also at OISEwhich I called informally ‘theory spotting;’ it worked from varioustexts and the business of the course was to find and identifytheoretical language and to examine how it worked. It was morestraightforward than it might seem in this brief account and thestudents apparently enjoyed it and, I think, learned a lot about /doing/theory. And now I’m teaching institutional ethnography at an advancedgraduate level as an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria,these past two years in the sociology department and next year in a newprogram called Studies in Policy and Practice.And then were was teaching women’s studies in the early days when thereweren’t even any books to work with and we had to invent the course andeven write some of the material to be used. Around 1972 myself and threeother women at the University of British Columbia initiated a women’sstudies course, the first at that university. In a forthcoming bookedited by Wendy Robbins called /Minds of our Own, / I’ve written as follows:[the four instructors who originated the course] ignorance, the absenceof material /to be taught/, as well as the women’s movement’sdistinctive commitment to working from women’s experience turned intoextraordinary advantages. In a course with sometimes eighty students, weengaged in dialogue. The differentiation between students and professorsin knowledge was not great. True we had skills that they might not yetappropriate, but when it came to knowledge of women’s lives, they couldcontribute from their own experiential knowledge as much as could any ofthe four of us, let alone the literature we drew on.I came to think of each hour of the three hours a week as the /real/university. It was in those three hours that, like the children whofollowed the Pied Piper into the world of light through the door in themountain, we entered the real university of dialogue, argument, variedviews, learning, learning, learning. Jurgen Habermas’s (1970) idealspeech situation was nothing to this. Nothing I’ve experienced before orsince was like this. Everyone had knowledge to draw on; everyone hadignorance to be remedied; everyone was passionately concerned to learnas well as to teach.”
I also asked her what a feminist pedagogy meant to her, she responded:
“Not much. I believe at the postsecondary and more particularly at thegraduate level that the teacher should teach from her skills with a viewto passing on to students what she knows how to do. So I expect to actas an authority in the classroom. But that doesn’t mean I’m a dictator.I just have to think hard about how to get across most effectively whatI know how to do. And I believe that students learn a great deal intalking with one another so I’ve developed ways of promoting that inclass and I believe also in working with students’ work and not just inwhat an instructor says, so I also do that.”
Dr. Smith does not have any particular thoughts about the future of the discipline, and doubts that there are any sociology graduate schools that are that exciting.
References
Smith, Dorothy. “Curriculum Vitae.”
Smith, Dorothy. “Dorothy Smith.” http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/mdevault/dorothy_smith.htm
Smith, Dorothy. “Email Interview by Sierra Powell,” April 2007.
Smith, Dorothy. “Sociology from Women’s Experience: A Reaffirmation,” Sociology Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1992): 88-98.
Her outlook on teaching and the power it holds can be summed in this paragraph that she writes: “Universities and colleges already are political; teaching in the social sciences and the humanities is a practical politics. Teaching the canon is patriarchal activism. I take this fact seriously. Of course I want a sociology for women to provide useful research services to organizations working for women’s issues, but I want more as well.” Furthermore, Dr. Smith believes that sociological research should be done using micro analysis using the method of inquiry from the standpoint of women.
When asked if she had any favorite classes to teach and why her response was as follows:
“I liked to teach classes that gave me an opportunity to learn. I’ve beendeveloping an alternative sociology based on principles from the women’smovement practices of ‘consciousness raising’ and it has been importantfor me to discover with students what works and what doesn’t. In havingto teach, you also have to learn how to think about something or throughsomething to clarify it to the point where you can actually speak it. Ilearned a great deal and always enjoyed teaching /the SocialOrganization of Knowledge / to graduate students in sociology at theOntario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). That was a course Iinvented; it has nothing to do with the sociology of knowledge astraditionally taught, but was developed out of early work I’d done on‘documentary reality.’ I’ve invented a couple of courses that I foundvery interesting to teach: one was an undergraduate course at theUniversity of Victoria – I’d misunderstood what I was supposed to teachand set it up as a course on /Research and Social Justice/ in which Itold students about, and invited in visitors with relevant experience totalk about, the relevance of different kinds of sociological researchmethods/approaches to different settings of social justice activism. Mysecond invention was an introductory graduate theory course also at OISEwhich I called informally ‘theory spotting;’ it worked from varioustexts and the business of the course was to find and identifytheoretical language and to examine how it worked. It was morestraightforward than it might seem in this brief account and thestudents apparently enjoyed it and, I think, learned a lot about /doing/theory. And now I’m teaching institutional ethnography at an advancedgraduate level as an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria,these past two years in the sociology department and next year in a newprogram called Studies in Policy and Practice.And then were was teaching women’s studies in the early days when thereweren’t even any books to work with and we had to invent the course andeven write some of the material to be used. Around 1972 myself and threeother women at the University of British Columbia initiated a women’sstudies course, the first at that university. In a forthcoming bookedited by Wendy Robbins called /Minds of our Own, / I’ve written as follows:[the four instructors who originated the course] ignorance, the absenceof material /to be taught/, as well as the women’s movement’sdistinctive commitment to working from women’s experience turned intoextraordinary advantages. In a course with sometimes eighty students, weengaged in dialogue. The differentiation between students and professorsin knowledge was not great. True we had skills that they might not yetappropriate, but when it came to knowledge of women’s lives, they couldcontribute from their own experiential knowledge as much as could any ofthe four of us, let alone the literature we drew on.I came to think of each hour of the three hours a week as the /real/university. It was in those three hours that, like the children whofollowed the Pied Piper into the world of light through the door in themountain, we entered the real university of dialogue, argument, variedviews, learning, learning, learning. Jurgen Habermas’s (1970) idealspeech situation was nothing to this. Nothing I’ve experienced before orsince was like this. Everyone had knowledge to draw on; everyone hadignorance to be remedied; everyone was passionately concerned to learnas well as to teach.”
I also asked her what a feminist pedagogy meant to her, she responded:
“Not much. I believe at the postsecondary and more particularly at thegraduate level that the teacher should teach from her skills with a viewto passing on to students what she knows how to do. So I expect to actas an authority in the classroom. But that doesn’t mean I’m a dictator.I just have to think hard about how to get across most effectively whatI know how to do. And I believe that students learn a great deal intalking with one another so I’ve developed ways of promoting that inclass and I believe also in working with students’ work and not just inwhat an instructor says, so I also do that.”
Dr. Smith does not have any particular thoughts about the future of the discipline, and doubts that there are any sociology graduate schools that are that exciting.
References
Smith, Dorothy. “Curriculum Vitae.”
Smith, Dorothy. “Dorothy Smith.” http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/mdevault/dorothy_smith.htm
Smith, Dorothy. “Email Interview by Sierra Powell,” April 2007.
Smith, Dorothy. “Sociology from Women’s Experience: A Reaffirmation,” Sociology Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1992): 88-98.
Community Involvement and Activism
Dorothy Smith’s activism manifests itself in a few different ways. Dorothy Smith’s goal of finding a sociology for women is something that she feels is necessary to the understanding of sociology in a more general sense. One way Dr. Smith presents activism is in her writing. In addition to activist writing, there are other ways in which she has been involved in activism throughout her career. First, Dorothy Smith considers her first political action to be one that occurred while she was at Berkeley. Smith decided that female graduate students studying currently as well as in the future shouldn’t be as naïve as she was about the reality of women’s position in society. At the Berkeley academy she gathered lists of the entire faculty in various departments and exposed the minimal number of women faculty members.
Smith tells the story of a second defiant act of hers: “I remember, not long before I finished my thesis and not long before Bill left, being at a dinner party where the host made a sexist joke. I said what I remember as ‘I’m not going to put up with this kind of shit about women any more’ and walked out.”
Furthermore, Smith demonstrates another form of activism for a different cause. With her husband at the time, Bill Smith, Dr. Smith picketed to protest how the demonstrations outside the Un-American Activities Committee Meetings were handled. She remembers this as a peaceful demonstration.
Later on in her career she formed a women’s action group during her time at the University of British Columbia. Also at this time she researched topics that were relevant to action, and worked to connect this research with that of other women academics. The rest of her academic career was devoted to studying and writing sociology for women. Her sociology for women relies upon women’s actions and experiences.
Dorothy Smith writes about her academic activism: “I was very active in the women’s movement for several years first in the community in Vancouver (working with a variety of different women’s group including women in trade unions) and then when I moved to Toronto more with women’s organizing in institutional settings – public school teachers, academic women, women in postsecondary education in general, and women in trade unions). I was also active in menial fashion (putting up posters, selling buttons, and so on) in the Peace Movement. But in more recent years, as I’ve gotten old, I don’t have so much energy and the women’s movement isn’t so active at least not in ways close to my life, so I’ve put more into research writing.”
Dr. Smith formally belongs to the Green and Left political parties in Canada, and is active in a few other programs. Dr. Smith is very active in the Rural Women Making Change Program at the University of Guelph. Also, she explains her involvement in other programs: “the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada has a program called Community-University Research Alliances that funds this program among others. It includes several community organizations in southwestern Ontario, including a union local, a feminist community organization concerned with issues for women school leavers in a local community, the women’s caucus in the National Farmers’ Union, an organization concerned with women migrant workers, and a community organized concerned with skills training and job finding for women. The academics like myself work in relation to specific projects that are developed jointly but primarily to serve the needs of the community organizations.” Recently she has been “doing some research on organizing fair trade campaigns in municipalities which isn’t directly hooked into a specific organization but is designed to develop useful knowledge for activists working in municipal settings.”
References
Smith, Dorothy. “A Berkeley Education.” In Gender and the Academic Experience, edited by Kathryn P. Meadow Orlans and Ruth A. Wallace, 45-56. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Smith, Dorothy. “Email Interview by Sierra Powell,” April 2007.
Smith, Dorothy. “Dorothy Smith.” http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/mdevault/dorothy_smith.htm
Smith tells the story of a second defiant act of hers: “I remember, not long before I finished my thesis and not long before Bill left, being at a dinner party where the host made a sexist joke. I said what I remember as ‘I’m not going to put up with this kind of shit about women any more’ and walked out.”
Furthermore, Smith demonstrates another form of activism for a different cause. With her husband at the time, Bill Smith, Dr. Smith picketed to protest how the demonstrations outside the Un-American Activities Committee Meetings were handled. She remembers this as a peaceful demonstration.
Later on in her career she formed a women’s action group during her time at the University of British Columbia. Also at this time she researched topics that were relevant to action, and worked to connect this research with that of other women academics. The rest of her academic career was devoted to studying and writing sociology for women. Her sociology for women relies upon women’s actions and experiences.
Dorothy Smith writes about her academic activism: “I was very active in the women’s movement for several years first in the community in Vancouver (working with a variety of different women’s group including women in trade unions) and then when I moved to Toronto more with women’s organizing in institutional settings – public school teachers, academic women, women in postsecondary education in general, and women in trade unions). I was also active in menial fashion (putting up posters, selling buttons, and so on) in the Peace Movement. But in more recent years, as I’ve gotten old, I don’t have so much energy and the women’s movement isn’t so active at least not in ways close to my life, so I’ve put more into research writing.”
Dr. Smith formally belongs to the Green and Left political parties in Canada, and is active in a few other programs. Dr. Smith is very active in the Rural Women Making Change Program at the University of Guelph. Also, she explains her involvement in other programs: “the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada has a program called Community-University Research Alliances that funds this program among others. It includes several community organizations in southwestern Ontario, including a union local, a feminist community organization concerned with issues for women school leavers in a local community, the women’s caucus in the National Farmers’ Union, an organization concerned with women migrant workers, and a community organized concerned with skills training and job finding for women. The academics like myself work in relation to specific projects that are developed jointly but primarily to serve the needs of the community organizations.” Recently she has been “doing some research on organizing fair trade campaigns in municipalities which isn’t directly hooked into a specific organization but is designed to develop useful knowledge for activists working in municipal settings.”
References
Smith, Dorothy. “A Berkeley Education.” In Gender and the Academic Experience, edited by Kathryn P. Meadow Orlans and Ruth A. Wallace, 45-56. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Smith, Dorothy. “Email Interview by Sierra Powell,” April 2007.
Smith, Dorothy. “Dorothy Smith.” http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/mdevault/dorothy_smith.htm
Research
Major Works
Institutional Ethnography: Sociology for People. Oxford: AltaMira Press, 2005.
Writing the Social: Critique, Theory, and Investigations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990
Texts, Facts, and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling. London, England: Routledge, 1990.
The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1987.
Feminism and Marxism: A Place to Begin, A Way to Go. Vancouver, BC: New Star Books, 1977.
Power and the Front Line: Social Controls in a State Mental Hospital. Berkeley, CA: Dissertation University of California, Berkeley, 1963.
Dorothy Smith is a sociologist who critiques sociology while maintaining her commitment to the discipline. Dr. Smith is motivated by the gap that she sees between the local actuality of people’s experiences and sociology. Smith’s ideal sociology is one that tells the truth about the way things actually are. Consequently, her goal is to form just that. Note the use of the term “actual,” Smith means it in the sense that what is actual is what is outside of the text. Smith also uses actual as synonymous with local. Texts to Smith are essentially material objects that manifest rules and order that are read by many people. What lies outside of the text (the actual) and text meditated discourse are peoples’ experiences, knowledge, day to day activities, etc. Texts bridge power and organization with discourse, Smith calls this the relations of the ruling. Smith proposes a method of inquiry that investigates and accounts for the actual; which is something that remains outside of sociology as it stands. Dr. Smith characterizes a method of inquiry as something that is always ongoing and discovering. The specific site that her method of inquiry is created from is the standpoint of women. Standpoint in the singular sense is used to because movement as of the women’s movement is singular as well. Smith writes that our experiences as women are unique because they always return to ourselves and others as embodied subjects. This embodiment is common ground among women. It appears as if this method of inquiry could be used for anyone’s experiences, though Smith chose the standpoint of women as a result of her own experiences. A symposium in the Spring of 1992 was organized by Barbara Laslett, University of Minnesota and Barrie Thorne, University of Southern California; Dorothy Smith’s sociology for women being the topic of discussion. In this symposium, Charles Lemert, Patricia Hill Collins, and Bob Connell commented on Smith’s work. The following are summaries of their comments:
Charles Lemert begins by characterizing the standpoint of women as standpoint epistemology, using her discussion of the “line of fault”. The line of fault is Smith’s term for that difference between what women know/experience and what is known/written. Next, Lemert suggests that the foundation of Smith’s theory is the subjective of her own experiences, and in fact she is using other’s experiences to project her own. It is my opinion that this may be true, but doesn’t that just further show that these experiences that women are having are common and part of the standpoint of women? Lemert’s argument is that she revises her sociology at various times in different years, and that this revision means that her sociology is changing to reflect what she is currently experiencing. Lemert does a good job of outlining the ultimate question for Smith: “Objecting structures and subjective experiences- what is their relation, in sociology and in life?” However, Smith is more focused upon what their relation should be. Lemert’s discussion of Smith and postructuralism can be related to one of the texts for this class: Sex, Gender and the Body by Toril Moi. Moi articulates the body and mind of a woman as a situation that is always changing, and Smith characterizes subjective women’s experiences as embodied. Both seem to draw upon women as they cannot be divorced from either experiences with society or their bodies. Lemert explains that Smith disagrees with postmodern theories because they look to textualities while Smith’s project tries to move beyond them. Lastly, Lemert questions what makes the standpoint of women distinctive, and also is it possible for any woman’s experiences to be divorced from any other characteristics that she might possess?
Patricia Hill Collins discusses Dr. Smith’s work in terms of a circle. Men are inside the circle and women are outside it. Collins points out that despite challenges to society by other marginalized groups, the inner circle had remained. It is my opinion that this is true to some extent, but that the challenges that have been made by marginalized groups have been useful in progressing those groups. For example, challenging slavery has let to the abolishment of that system. Collins summarizes Smith’s work with two themes. First, “Smith has investigated the social organization of objectified knowledge in order to demonstrate how such knowledge constitutes an essential part of the relations of ruling for contemporary capitalism. Sociology represents one example of this type of objectified knowledge.” It’s true that Smith regards this system of power and control as linked to capitalism. The second major theme that Collins identifies is quite obvious: “Smith has sought to explore the social from the site of women’s experiences.” Collins’ first objection to Smith’s work is that she fails to embrace one particular theoretical perspective. Collins believes that this is because Smith does not want to be locked into any of the critiques of any of the perspectives. Before moving further with objections to Smith’s research, Collins spends some time writing about Smith’s challenges; there are five. First, Smith is not restricted to Karl Marx, but is able to use his theories, she also works to bridge the gap between macro and micro sociology, demonstrates the value of looking beyond sociology to improve it, strives to better our knowledge of how power operates through organization of knowledge, and Smith tries to heal the empirical and theoretical pieces of sociology. Collins believes that in order for Smith to be successful in her endeavor, she must work to penetrate the inner circle and critique it from within. There are two ways in which Dr. Smith’s critique of sociology is limited in its success. First, Smith focuses of texts, but yet suggests no alternative as to how local knowledge would be shared otherwise. Collins thinks that this is especially true given that Smith overlooks other groups that are oppressed; similar to the argument mentioned earlier by Lemert. Secondly, Collins explains that by using the discourse and worldview of the inner circle Smith perpetuates it. Smith does this by assuming the language of the inner circle.
Along the lines of the critiques written by Lemert and Collins, Bob Connell begins his comment on Smith’s work by noting that Smith’s view is not worldly, and that she primarily uses American sociology. However, Connell does not explain why this is especially necessary. I ask, does his critique demand that all sociologies of the world be considered in every instance, and is that something that is generally feasible? Connell’s next objection to Dorothy Smith is that she is in fact only telling her own story, and writing of her experiences as a mother, sociologist, etc. He explains that this is a problem for her because she flips between the world of particularities and the world of abstraction. Further, he writes that due to the fact that the standpoint of women is outside of the ruling apparatus is the precise reason why there is no feminist sociology. It seems as if this indicates that in order to solve the problem that Smith is driving; one must fully penetrate the ruling apparatus. This is an interesting point, is it necessary that our political, economic, and social systems all be deconstructed in order to arrive at the end that Smith begins with? Connell’s critique of Smith’s research can be summarized in three points. First, he has issues with a standpoint of women as a concept. He points out that the standpoint of women is not exempt from all of the problems of other abstractions. Essentially he asks, what makes the standpoint of women unique and immune to these comments? I think he has a powerful second point, Connell inquires about how in modern times, there are women that exist within the apparatus ruling. What about Condoleezza Rice? Connell points out that these Women may have a standpoint that is in fact not like women that exist outside of the apparatus of organization. Connell’s third objection is that standpoint is singular, and like the objections above, this limits out perspectives of race, class, etc. that may influence a woman’s experiences. Also, Connell points out that Smith’s arguments are inconsistent with Marx, because Marx kept systems of state, class, etc. as distinct entities whereas Smith lumps them all into the ruling apparatus. Ultimately, Connell contends that Smith’s results in anarchist feminism. This is because anarchists desire the entire dismantling of the ruling apparatus, and that is what Connell thinks that Smith would also have to desire to achieve her goal.
Fortunately, Smith writes a response to the critiques of Collins, Connell, and Lemert. Dr. Smith begins her response by clarifying the notion of standpoint. In response to Connell’s claim that the standpoint of women is an extralocal abstraction Smith defines what her project is and the purpose of it. Her project “attempts to create a method of inquiry beginning from the site of being that we discovered as we learned to center ourselves as speaking, knowing subjects in our experience as women.” Dr. Smith explains that the word standpoint is singular, and that this singularity parallels with the women’s movement, as it is a singular move.
Next, Smith seeks to explain why the standpoint of women is something that is necessary and important. She indicates that without utilizing the standpoint of women in sociology there is a lack of knowledge about the experiences of women. Also, “the theorizing of ‘standpoint’ within feminist discourse displaces the practical politics that the notion of ‘standpoint’ originally captured.” She explains that the concept of standpoint is then reduced to a purely discursive function. Specifically, Smith believes it is important to study how women’s experiences are like subjects in bodies. This is something that Dr. Smith sees as common ground among all women, our sexed bodies. Essentially, women cannot be divorced from the bodily site of being.
Connell argues that Smith does not take into account other forms of oppression such as race and class. Smith responds with her believe that the standpoint of women is especially distinct. This is because “the standpoint of women situates inquiry in the actualities of people’s living, beginning with their experience of living, and understands that inquiry and its product are in and of the same actuality.” Researching the standpoint of women is also notably different than sociology based in texts because the standpoint of women incorporates actual women’s actual experiences. Connell and Collins also claim that Smith is interested in discrediting and deconstructing. Smith’s response is that she is not, and instead she is “concerned with examining and explicating how ‘abstractions’ are put together, with concepts, knowledge, facticity, as socially organized practices.”
All three critiques articulate that Smith privileges the standpoint of women over others, this is because one of the reasons she began to write about this in the first place is because of her own experiences. Smith’s response to this objection is that the method of inquiry that she has developed could be used for anyone and she just chose women because of her personal experiences. Basically, Smith believes that using the method of experiential understanding of people and sociology could be applied to any group or category.
In her use the standpoint of women is simply a site to begin the method of inquiry, which is what she chooses to describe more specifically in the next section of her response. Smith explains that established sociology, and its inquiry and methods, treats people as objects of their study. Through this treatment the relations of ruling are incorporate through the texts they are written. Dr. Smith explains her method of inquiry and why it is paramount. The term actual is important to her theory, because it demonstrates that there will be no discrepancy between people’s experiences and the sociology that attempts to describe them. For her, the standpoint of women is the actual. Texts are important because they bridge the actual experiences with discourse, and texts replicate relations of the ruling through the language, organization, thoughts, and culture that is used within them.
Dr. Smith responds to Lemert by articulating that the issue for her is not “discomfort or tolerance for ambiguity or appreciation of irony. Rather it is an issue of the reliability and accuracy of the products of inquiry, beginning from the standpoint of women.” Here again we see Smith attempting to make sociology reflect the actual. One especially interesting point that Smith makes is regarding language. Smith believes that the language of the dominant discourses should always be rewritten in accordance with experiences and its changes. It is my opinion that this is a useful point, considering the definitions of words change over time, why not just have a new word for the new meaning? Smith also goes further to write that “dialogue with the world constrains you.”
In the next part of her response Smith answers some of the objections to her theory on point. Smith begins by explaining that Lemert’s application of the Flax paradox is not applicable to her work. She answers this with a map analogy: “We have maps, we use maps, we rely on maps in a perfectly ordinary and mundane way. I’m not aiming for the one truth. I’m aiming rather to produce sociological accounts on this kind of credence...The map extends my capacity to move effectly in the city. It does not tell me everything about the subway system, but it does tell me the sequence of stations and gives me some idea of the distance between them. I’d like to develop a sociology that would tie people’s sites of experience and action into accounts of social organization and relations which have that ordinarily reliable kind of faithfulness to ‘how it works’.”
Collins and Connell give a metaphor of insider and outsider. Smith argues that this implies an outside society. Smith explains that Collins and Connell seek to understand oppressed and marginalized people as they are outside. Contrastingly Smith argues that these people are not in fact outside, instead they are inside and she works to capture their actual positions. Thus, when Dr. Smith claims that she is writing an insiders sociology, she means that there is actually no outsider and all experiences are inside, and therefore should be interpreted as such.
The next section of Dorothy Smith’s response is titles “The Politics and the Product.” Connell suggests that Dr. Smith’s sociology doesn’t reach out to other communities like Australia, Europe, etc. Her response is: “it is indeed true that my feminism is generally oppositional, but I’d have got nowhere if I’d stuck with the radical tradition of European sociology, as Connell suggests, which for the most part is embedded as deeply in the male-dominated standpoints of ruling as is American sociology.” She goes on to explain her Marxist influences and that oppositional modes of thinking have been popular in North America and also Europe.
Lastly, Smith articulates the differences between her and Collins concerns. Smith explains that Collins is more concerned with transforming the consciousnesses of those that are oppressed. Contrastingly, Smith explains her theory as being concerned with transforming and confronting the relations that oppress people. Smith wants her way of micro analyzing to become widespread and open up sociologists to being the subject of sociology rather than just observing. Smith envisions a world that intellectuals are active in. Ultimately, Smith’s research concern is “to build an ordinary good knowledge of the text-mediated organization of power from the standpoint of women in contemporary capitalism.” It is my opinion that this is a very noble cause. Capitalism, as it proliferates around the world, gives way to the sustainability of systems that exploit one for benefit of the other.
A chapter from a book, Feminism Edited by Sandra Harding, that Dorothy Smith has written summarizes Smith’s views of women, sociology, feminism, and her theory. I have summarized it here:
In “The Women’s Perspective as a Radical Critique of Sociology” Dorothy Smith outlines her theory in nine points. One argument that I found especially interesting appeared in her first point. Smith argues that when studying women’s sociology, “it is not enough to supplement an established sociology by addressing ourselves to what has been left out.” In essence, women’s sociology should not just be what is left out of the men’s world. If we concede that women’s studies is simply just what is left out of the men’s world , then women would be agreeing with the notion that women are secondary. Smith articulates that women in fact have their own world that can be studied independent of the men’s world, and that there are differences between the two that lie deeper than just a biological explanation. The problem that she sees with sociology is that women and their experiences do not fit in with it, and something needs to be done to change this institutional subjugation of women. Put differently, this point is exemplified in some of her other works: women should be a part of sociology, thus the standpoint of women via women’s experiences is the best place to begin.
In her second point Dr. Smith begins to develop an explanation of the organizations and institutions that are the center of women’s oppression in society. She explains that these institutions are ruling and governing women in a way that is unfavorable to women. They are especially prevalent in the fields of government, sociology, and economics. Sociology that doesn’t include women sociologists formulates the model within which society functions. The male sociology fails to recognize that the formal organization of men above women is absolutely horrific. Established sociology does not recognize that women have a different position within the institutions; Smith’s theory recognizes it. Her audience in this paper consists of graduate women learning to be sociologists, and she wishes them to change the sociological perspective so that it includes the perspective of women.
Her third and fourth points seek to digest how male sociologists fit into sociology, and then comparatively where women sociologists fit in. This part of the article is very complex; she is saying that men and women observe society from completely different perspectives (standpoints). Outside of the obvious that they are simply different genders, what gender the sociologist is determines if they are observing society from an insider or outsider standpoint. Male sociologists are observing from an insider point of view, they are inside the world that rules over, dominates, and exploits women. On the other hand, women sociologists are in a world that is outside the structure that male sociology observes. This explains why women feel/are alienated. Dorothy Smith seeks to develop an “insider’s sociology,” where all standpoints are inside, and the insider outsider distinction is eliminated.
Logically, after describing how established doesn’t include the standpoint of women, it makes sense to explain what should be done about it. Smith’s fifth point outlines what the goal of women sociologists should be. “Women sociologists stand at the center of contradiction in the relation of our discipline to our experience of the world. Transcending that contradiction means setting up a different kind of relation than that which we discover in the routine practice of our worlds.” Basically, sociologist’s relation to the world, and women’s relation to the world through their experiences are contradictory. So, Smith believes that that contradiction should be transcended. This is done by creating a new place where people that are both women and sociologists can flourish. Ideally, in this place, the gap between people’s experiences and what is written in sociology no longer exists.
The sixth point outlines what exactly their alternative approach should be. Smith opposes a radical revolutionary type of change in the field, and instead recommends a more gradual approach of changing the relation of women’s experience and their study of sociology. Without actualizing this recommendation, she fears that women who are studying sociology will be constrained and the knowledge they have of the socially constructed world will remain outside of the world of their experiences. Women sociologists’ experiences should be brought to the field, rather than them constraining their experiences to fit in a field that is male dominated.
The seventh and eighth points further explain her argument that the observer (sociologist) should not be separated from the world that they are observing. I think what she is saying is that sociology, as a field, is better served if the sociologists have an insider relationship to the field. Thus, the current problem sociology faces is that women sociologists are separated from sociology. This is because at the time this was written sociology was a field dominated by men, and women could not access that world (see Dorothy Smith’s experiences with this in her biography).The knowledge that women have in sociology should be consistent with the knowledge that they are gaining from their experiences. Unfortunately, women are limited because the knowledge sociology has of them and their experiences contradict. Dr. Smith wants those that read her article to create a new sociology in which that contradiction no longer exists.
The ninth point concludes that, in the future, women’s activities, studies, and initiatives need to be focused on a new sociology. The new sociology that Dorothy Smith envisions is one that allows women to focus on something that is more productive for them, because sociology will include their standpoint.
References
Connell, R.W. “A Sober Anarchism,” Sociology Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1992): 81-87.
Collins Hill, Patricia. “Transforming the Inner Circle: Dorothy Smith’s Challenge to Sociological Theory,” Sociology Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1992): 73-80.
Lemert, Charles. “Subjectivity’s Limit: The Unsolved Riddle of the Standpoint,” Sociology Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1992): 63-72.
Smith, Dorothy. “Sociology from Women’s Experience: A Reaffirmation,” Sociology Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1992): 88-98.
Smith, Dorothy. “Women’s Perspective As A Radical Critique of Sociology.” In Feminism, edited by Sandra Harding. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Institutional Ethnography: Sociology for People. Oxford: AltaMira Press, 2005.
Writing the Social: Critique, Theory, and Investigations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990
Texts, Facts, and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling. London, England: Routledge, 1990.
The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1987.
Feminism and Marxism: A Place to Begin, A Way to Go. Vancouver, BC: New Star Books, 1977.
Power and the Front Line: Social Controls in a State Mental Hospital. Berkeley, CA: Dissertation University of California, Berkeley, 1963.
Dorothy Smith is a sociologist who critiques sociology while maintaining her commitment to the discipline. Dr. Smith is motivated by the gap that she sees between the local actuality of people’s experiences and sociology. Smith’s ideal sociology is one that tells the truth about the way things actually are. Consequently, her goal is to form just that. Note the use of the term “actual,” Smith means it in the sense that what is actual is what is outside of the text. Smith also uses actual as synonymous with local. Texts to Smith are essentially material objects that manifest rules and order that are read by many people. What lies outside of the text (the actual) and text meditated discourse are peoples’ experiences, knowledge, day to day activities, etc. Texts bridge power and organization with discourse, Smith calls this the relations of the ruling. Smith proposes a method of inquiry that investigates and accounts for the actual; which is something that remains outside of sociology as it stands. Dr. Smith characterizes a method of inquiry as something that is always ongoing and discovering. The specific site that her method of inquiry is created from is the standpoint of women. Standpoint in the singular sense is used to because movement as of the women’s movement is singular as well. Smith writes that our experiences as women are unique because they always return to ourselves and others as embodied subjects. This embodiment is common ground among women. It appears as if this method of inquiry could be used for anyone’s experiences, though Smith chose the standpoint of women as a result of her own experiences. A symposium in the Spring of 1992 was organized by Barbara Laslett, University of Minnesota and Barrie Thorne, University of Southern California; Dorothy Smith’s sociology for women being the topic of discussion. In this symposium, Charles Lemert, Patricia Hill Collins, and Bob Connell commented on Smith’s work. The following are summaries of their comments:
Charles Lemert begins by characterizing the standpoint of women as standpoint epistemology, using her discussion of the “line of fault”. The line of fault is Smith’s term for that difference between what women know/experience and what is known/written. Next, Lemert suggests that the foundation of Smith’s theory is the subjective of her own experiences, and in fact she is using other’s experiences to project her own. It is my opinion that this may be true, but doesn’t that just further show that these experiences that women are having are common and part of the standpoint of women? Lemert’s argument is that she revises her sociology at various times in different years, and that this revision means that her sociology is changing to reflect what she is currently experiencing. Lemert does a good job of outlining the ultimate question for Smith: “Objecting structures and subjective experiences- what is their relation, in sociology and in life?” However, Smith is more focused upon what their relation should be. Lemert’s discussion of Smith and postructuralism can be related to one of the texts for this class: Sex, Gender and the Body by Toril Moi. Moi articulates the body and mind of a woman as a situation that is always changing, and Smith characterizes subjective women’s experiences as embodied. Both seem to draw upon women as they cannot be divorced from either experiences with society or their bodies. Lemert explains that Smith disagrees with postmodern theories because they look to textualities while Smith’s project tries to move beyond them. Lastly, Lemert questions what makes the standpoint of women distinctive, and also is it possible for any woman’s experiences to be divorced from any other characteristics that she might possess?
Patricia Hill Collins discusses Dr. Smith’s work in terms of a circle. Men are inside the circle and women are outside it. Collins points out that despite challenges to society by other marginalized groups, the inner circle had remained. It is my opinion that this is true to some extent, but that the challenges that have been made by marginalized groups have been useful in progressing those groups. For example, challenging slavery has let to the abolishment of that system. Collins summarizes Smith’s work with two themes. First, “Smith has investigated the social organization of objectified knowledge in order to demonstrate how such knowledge constitutes an essential part of the relations of ruling for contemporary capitalism. Sociology represents one example of this type of objectified knowledge.” It’s true that Smith regards this system of power and control as linked to capitalism. The second major theme that Collins identifies is quite obvious: “Smith has sought to explore the social from the site of women’s experiences.” Collins’ first objection to Smith’s work is that she fails to embrace one particular theoretical perspective. Collins believes that this is because Smith does not want to be locked into any of the critiques of any of the perspectives. Before moving further with objections to Smith’s research, Collins spends some time writing about Smith’s challenges; there are five. First, Smith is not restricted to Karl Marx, but is able to use his theories, she also works to bridge the gap between macro and micro sociology, demonstrates the value of looking beyond sociology to improve it, strives to better our knowledge of how power operates through organization of knowledge, and Smith tries to heal the empirical and theoretical pieces of sociology. Collins believes that in order for Smith to be successful in her endeavor, she must work to penetrate the inner circle and critique it from within. There are two ways in which Dr. Smith’s critique of sociology is limited in its success. First, Smith focuses of texts, but yet suggests no alternative as to how local knowledge would be shared otherwise. Collins thinks that this is especially true given that Smith overlooks other groups that are oppressed; similar to the argument mentioned earlier by Lemert. Secondly, Collins explains that by using the discourse and worldview of the inner circle Smith perpetuates it. Smith does this by assuming the language of the inner circle.
Along the lines of the critiques written by Lemert and Collins, Bob Connell begins his comment on Smith’s work by noting that Smith’s view is not worldly, and that she primarily uses American sociology. However, Connell does not explain why this is especially necessary. I ask, does his critique demand that all sociologies of the world be considered in every instance, and is that something that is generally feasible? Connell’s next objection to Dorothy Smith is that she is in fact only telling her own story, and writing of her experiences as a mother, sociologist, etc. He explains that this is a problem for her because she flips between the world of particularities and the world of abstraction. Further, he writes that due to the fact that the standpoint of women is outside of the ruling apparatus is the precise reason why there is no feminist sociology. It seems as if this indicates that in order to solve the problem that Smith is driving; one must fully penetrate the ruling apparatus. This is an interesting point, is it necessary that our political, economic, and social systems all be deconstructed in order to arrive at the end that Smith begins with? Connell’s critique of Smith’s research can be summarized in three points. First, he has issues with a standpoint of women as a concept. He points out that the standpoint of women is not exempt from all of the problems of other abstractions. Essentially he asks, what makes the standpoint of women unique and immune to these comments? I think he has a powerful second point, Connell inquires about how in modern times, there are women that exist within the apparatus ruling. What about Condoleezza Rice? Connell points out that these Women may have a standpoint that is in fact not like women that exist outside of the apparatus of organization. Connell’s third objection is that standpoint is singular, and like the objections above, this limits out perspectives of race, class, etc. that may influence a woman’s experiences. Also, Connell points out that Smith’s arguments are inconsistent with Marx, because Marx kept systems of state, class, etc. as distinct entities whereas Smith lumps them all into the ruling apparatus. Ultimately, Connell contends that Smith’s results in anarchist feminism. This is because anarchists desire the entire dismantling of the ruling apparatus, and that is what Connell thinks that Smith would also have to desire to achieve her goal.
Fortunately, Smith writes a response to the critiques of Collins, Connell, and Lemert. Dr. Smith begins her response by clarifying the notion of standpoint. In response to Connell’s claim that the standpoint of women is an extralocal abstraction Smith defines what her project is and the purpose of it. Her project “attempts to create a method of inquiry beginning from the site of being that we discovered as we learned to center ourselves as speaking, knowing subjects in our experience as women.” Dr. Smith explains that the word standpoint is singular, and that this singularity parallels with the women’s movement, as it is a singular move.
Next, Smith seeks to explain why the standpoint of women is something that is necessary and important. She indicates that without utilizing the standpoint of women in sociology there is a lack of knowledge about the experiences of women. Also, “the theorizing of ‘standpoint’ within feminist discourse displaces the practical politics that the notion of ‘standpoint’ originally captured.” She explains that the concept of standpoint is then reduced to a purely discursive function. Specifically, Smith believes it is important to study how women’s experiences are like subjects in bodies. This is something that Dr. Smith sees as common ground among all women, our sexed bodies. Essentially, women cannot be divorced from the bodily site of being.
Connell argues that Smith does not take into account other forms of oppression such as race and class. Smith responds with her believe that the standpoint of women is especially distinct. This is because “the standpoint of women situates inquiry in the actualities of people’s living, beginning with their experience of living, and understands that inquiry and its product are in and of the same actuality.” Researching the standpoint of women is also notably different than sociology based in texts because the standpoint of women incorporates actual women’s actual experiences. Connell and Collins also claim that Smith is interested in discrediting and deconstructing. Smith’s response is that she is not, and instead she is “concerned with examining and explicating how ‘abstractions’ are put together, with concepts, knowledge, facticity, as socially organized practices.”
All three critiques articulate that Smith privileges the standpoint of women over others, this is because one of the reasons she began to write about this in the first place is because of her own experiences. Smith’s response to this objection is that the method of inquiry that she has developed could be used for anyone and she just chose women because of her personal experiences. Basically, Smith believes that using the method of experiential understanding of people and sociology could be applied to any group or category.
In her use the standpoint of women is simply a site to begin the method of inquiry, which is what she chooses to describe more specifically in the next section of her response. Smith explains that established sociology, and its inquiry and methods, treats people as objects of their study. Through this treatment the relations of ruling are incorporate through the texts they are written. Dr. Smith explains her method of inquiry and why it is paramount. The term actual is important to her theory, because it demonstrates that there will be no discrepancy between people’s experiences and the sociology that attempts to describe them. For her, the standpoint of women is the actual. Texts are important because they bridge the actual experiences with discourse, and texts replicate relations of the ruling through the language, organization, thoughts, and culture that is used within them.
Dr. Smith responds to Lemert by articulating that the issue for her is not “discomfort or tolerance for ambiguity or appreciation of irony. Rather it is an issue of the reliability and accuracy of the products of inquiry, beginning from the standpoint of women.” Here again we see Smith attempting to make sociology reflect the actual. One especially interesting point that Smith makes is regarding language. Smith believes that the language of the dominant discourses should always be rewritten in accordance with experiences and its changes. It is my opinion that this is a useful point, considering the definitions of words change over time, why not just have a new word for the new meaning? Smith also goes further to write that “dialogue with the world constrains you.”
In the next part of her response Smith answers some of the objections to her theory on point. Smith begins by explaining that Lemert’s application of the Flax paradox is not applicable to her work. She answers this with a map analogy: “We have maps, we use maps, we rely on maps in a perfectly ordinary and mundane way. I’m not aiming for the one truth. I’m aiming rather to produce sociological accounts on this kind of credence...The map extends my capacity to move effectly in the city. It does not tell me everything about the subway system, but it does tell me the sequence of stations and gives me some idea of the distance between them. I’d like to develop a sociology that would tie people’s sites of experience and action into accounts of social organization and relations which have that ordinarily reliable kind of faithfulness to ‘how it works’.”
Collins and Connell give a metaphor of insider and outsider. Smith argues that this implies an outside society. Smith explains that Collins and Connell seek to understand oppressed and marginalized people as they are outside. Contrastingly Smith argues that these people are not in fact outside, instead they are inside and she works to capture their actual positions. Thus, when Dr. Smith claims that she is writing an insiders sociology, she means that there is actually no outsider and all experiences are inside, and therefore should be interpreted as such.
The next section of Dorothy Smith’s response is titles “The Politics and the Product.” Connell suggests that Dr. Smith’s sociology doesn’t reach out to other communities like Australia, Europe, etc. Her response is: “it is indeed true that my feminism is generally oppositional, but I’d have got nowhere if I’d stuck with the radical tradition of European sociology, as Connell suggests, which for the most part is embedded as deeply in the male-dominated standpoints of ruling as is American sociology.” She goes on to explain her Marxist influences and that oppositional modes of thinking have been popular in North America and also Europe.
Lastly, Smith articulates the differences between her and Collins concerns. Smith explains that Collins is more concerned with transforming the consciousnesses of those that are oppressed. Contrastingly, Smith explains her theory as being concerned with transforming and confronting the relations that oppress people. Smith wants her way of micro analyzing to become widespread and open up sociologists to being the subject of sociology rather than just observing. Smith envisions a world that intellectuals are active in. Ultimately, Smith’s research concern is “to build an ordinary good knowledge of the text-mediated organization of power from the standpoint of women in contemporary capitalism.” It is my opinion that this is a very noble cause. Capitalism, as it proliferates around the world, gives way to the sustainability of systems that exploit one for benefit of the other.
A chapter from a book, Feminism Edited by Sandra Harding, that Dorothy Smith has written summarizes Smith’s views of women, sociology, feminism, and her theory. I have summarized it here:
In “The Women’s Perspective as a Radical Critique of Sociology” Dorothy Smith outlines her theory in nine points. One argument that I found especially interesting appeared in her first point. Smith argues that when studying women’s sociology, “it is not enough to supplement an established sociology by addressing ourselves to what has been left out.” In essence, women’s sociology should not just be what is left out of the men’s world. If we concede that women’s studies is simply just what is left out of the men’s world , then women would be agreeing with the notion that women are secondary. Smith articulates that women in fact have their own world that can be studied independent of the men’s world, and that there are differences between the two that lie deeper than just a biological explanation. The problem that she sees with sociology is that women and their experiences do not fit in with it, and something needs to be done to change this institutional subjugation of women. Put differently, this point is exemplified in some of her other works: women should be a part of sociology, thus the standpoint of women via women’s experiences is the best place to begin.
In her second point Dr. Smith begins to develop an explanation of the organizations and institutions that are the center of women’s oppression in society. She explains that these institutions are ruling and governing women in a way that is unfavorable to women. They are especially prevalent in the fields of government, sociology, and economics. Sociology that doesn’t include women sociologists formulates the model within which society functions. The male sociology fails to recognize that the formal organization of men above women is absolutely horrific. Established sociology does not recognize that women have a different position within the institutions; Smith’s theory recognizes it. Her audience in this paper consists of graduate women learning to be sociologists, and she wishes them to change the sociological perspective so that it includes the perspective of women.
Her third and fourth points seek to digest how male sociologists fit into sociology, and then comparatively where women sociologists fit in. This part of the article is very complex; she is saying that men and women observe society from completely different perspectives (standpoints). Outside of the obvious that they are simply different genders, what gender the sociologist is determines if they are observing society from an insider or outsider standpoint. Male sociologists are observing from an insider point of view, they are inside the world that rules over, dominates, and exploits women. On the other hand, women sociologists are in a world that is outside the structure that male sociology observes. This explains why women feel/are alienated. Dorothy Smith seeks to develop an “insider’s sociology,” where all standpoints are inside, and the insider outsider distinction is eliminated.
Logically, after describing how established doesn’t include the standpoint of women, it makes sense to explain what should be done about it. Smith’s fifth point outlines what the goal of women sociologists should be. “Women sociologists stand at the center of contradiction in the relation of our discipline to our experience of the world. Transcending that contradiction means setting up a different kind of relation than that which we discover in the routine practice of our worlds.” Basically, sociologist’s relation to the world, and women’s relation to the world through their experiences are contradictory. So, Smith believes that that contradiction should be transcended. This is done by creating a new place where people that are both women and sociologists can flourish. Ideally, in this place, the gap between people’s experiences and what is written in sociology no longer exists.
The sixth point outlines what exactly their alternative approach should be. Smith opposes a radical revolutionary type of change in the field, and instead recommends a more gradual approach of changing the relation of women’s experience and their study of sociology. Without actualizing this recommendation, she fears that women who are studying sociology will be constrained and the knowledge they have of the socially constructed world will remain outside of the world of their experiences. Women sociologists’ experiences should be brought to the field, rather than them constraining their experiences to fit in a field that is male dominated.
The seventh and eighth points further explain her argument that the observer (sociologist) should not be separated from the world that they are observing. I think what she is saying is that sociology, as a field, is better served if the sociologists have an insider relationship to the field. Thus, the current problem sociology faces is that women sociologists are separated from sociology. This is because at the time this was written sociology was a field dominated by men, and women could not access that world (see Dorothy Smith’s experiences with this in her biography).The knowledge that women have in sociology should be consistent with the knowledge that they are gaining from their experiences. Unfortunately, women are limited because the knowledge sociology has of them and their experiences contradict. Dr. Smith wants those that read her article to create a new sociology in which that contradiction no longer exists.
The ninth point concludes that, in the future, women’s activities, studies, and initiatives need to be focused on a new sociology. The new sociology that Dorothy Smith envisions is one that allows women to focus on something that is more productive for them, because sociology will include their standpoint.
References
Connell, R.W. “A Sober Anarchism,” Sociology Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1992): 81-87.
Collins Hill, Patricia. “Transforming the Inner Circle: Dorothy Smith’s Challenge to Sociological Theory,” Sociology Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1992): 73-80.
Lemert, Charles. “Subjectivity’s Limit: The Unsolved Riddle of the Standpoint,” Sociology Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1992): 63-72.
Smith, Dorothy. “Sociology from Women’s Experience: A Reaffirmation,” Sociology Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Spring, 1992): 88-98.
Smith, Dorothy. “Women’s Perspective As A Radical Critique of Sociology.” In Feminism, edited by Sandra Harding. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Awards
Dr. Dorothy Smith has received two awards from the American Sociological Association: the Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award (1999), and the Jessie Bernard Award for Feminist Sociology (1993). “The Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award goes to those who have shown outstanding commitment to the profession of sociology and whose cumulative work has contributed in important ways to the advancement of the discipline. The body of lifetime work may include theoretical and/or methodological contributions. The award selection committee is particularly interested in work that substantially reorients the field in general or in a particular sub field.” Dr, Smith deserved this award because of her contribution to sociology regarding the institutional ethnography she developed along with her theory and reorienting of the standpoint of women into sociology. Smith poses a challenge to sociology while still maintaining her connection with the discipline throughout her career. When she was given this award she had been practicing her ideals for over 25 years. “The Jessie Bernard Award is given in recognition of scholarly work that has enlarged the horizons of sociology to encompass fully the role of women in society. The contribution may be in empirical research, theory, or methodology. It is presented for significant cumulative work done throughout a professional career. The award is open to women or men and is not restricted to sociologists.” This award is especially pertinent to Dorothy Smith because her work focuses on women and their experiences and relations to society’s institutions and structures. Smith’s goal for sociology is for the standpoint of women to be in all sociology. She created a sociology for women. In addition to her American Sociological Association accomplishments, Dorothy Smith has also received awards from the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association: the John Porter Award for The Everyday is Problematic (1990) and the Outstanding Contribution Award (1990). “The John Porter Award recognizes outstanding published scholarly contributions in the past three years which are within the John Porter tradition and are to the advancement of sociological and/or anthropological knowledge in Canada.” Dorothy Smith did some of her most influential writing and work in Canada at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Also she currently lives in British Columbia. “The CSAA Outstanding Contribution Award honors colleagues who have significantly contributed to Sociology and Anthropology in Canada” In addition, Smith also worked to found a women’s action group at the University of British Columbia and was effective in connecting women academics from colleges and universities other than her own through action-oriented research. A more extensive list of her awards is available in her Curriculum Vitae which is attach in the How She Became An Academic Section.
References:
American Sociological Association site, http://www.asanet.org/.
Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association site, http://www.csaa.ca/Menu.htm.
Smith, Dorothy. "Curriculum Vitae."
References:
American Sociological Association site, http://www.asanet.org/.
Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association site, http://www.csaa.ca/Menu.htm.
Smith, Dorothy. "Curriculum Vitae."
My Final Thoughts
This was a very interesting project for me; I have not heavily researched one person before. I learned a lot through this class about sociology and women's studies in general. Previously I had read sociology, but didn't know that it was considered sociology or women's studies. I enjoy considering what my perspective on various issues is, and some of what I read for this project enabled me to learn more about myself. I also learned a lot about the parts of history that aren't written in history books. Perhaps this is why this project is intended to be about people that have been left out of or erased from history. Also, my project on Dorothy Smith has, I think, prepared me for bumps that I may hit within my own career, and I thank her for that. I now know what to expect from graduate schools, though the situation has changed a bit since she was attending. Ultimately, I did hear back from Dr. Dorothy Smith in the last week of the project. It was exciting for me to be able to email with someone who is so highly regarded within sociology. Also, her answers were very on point, and it was rewarding to hear what she had to say after I had read so much about her. I do have some things in common with Dorothy Smith. We both align ourselves with more left political parties, and we both believe that climate change is a depressing problem. I hope that this site will be used as a valuable resource on Dorothy Smith.
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